December 07, 2004

How we work: Pierre Omidyar, entrepreneur

From a keynote speech at Tufts University:

So people often say to me - "when you built the system, you must have known that making it self-sustainable was the only way eBay could grow to serve 40 million users a day." Well... nope. I made the system self-sustaining for one reason: Back when I launched eBay on Labor Day 1995, eBay wasn't my business - it was my hobby. I had to build a system that was self-sustaining... because I had a real job to go to every morning.

I was working as a software engineer from 10 to 7, and I wanted to have a life on the weekends. So I built a system that could keep working - catching complaints and capturing feedback -- even when Pam and I were out mountain-biking, and the only one home was our cat.

Comments

eBay is the evil, it encourage the low life to manifest itself and prey on the honest, respectful, genuine folk and disolution, insult and weaken.
eBay should be dissolved. and be brought to justice.
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